The Dailies

There’s a lovely soul I know. She (Ann Voskamp) talks about counting grace and giving thanks and trying trying to keep your pen and grace-list up and speedy with God’s grace to you. It’s been a struggle for me – me who loves and ponders words and holds laughter like a mis-timed jack-in-the-box that springs up unwarranted. Me who answers pastor’s “Are you in love with life” pulpit question with the slickest, happiest “yes, I love life”. Me who counts blessings separate in each little leaf and moon-beam and joke.

But much as my little heart wanders from joy to thirst with the quickness of a deserter, so also God’s grace is something I cannot stop declaring.

It’s in my name.

Gianna. God is gracious.

My existence, my handle, my identity all declare his glory and generosity.

I love it that way. I love the way my name testifies to his love, and my pen can testify to his faithfulness in all the little daily things.

So that’s what this list is – the dailies. The sweet, the spicy, the beautiful and ponderous and laughable and shocking and happy and intelligent (maybe.)

Happy Monday!

Giant bubbles with rainbow skin shrinking back in a slow, soft pop? Yes.

This happy, random story. Ah, but to be there. (Photo cred to Inna at Paperraindrops).

Society6 has lovely art, and Takmaj has some of the loveliest. Find some of it here.

Those lyrics, and that cheer. Amen.

Then rain came down an artist, and painted everything bright and beautiful.

Grace always!

-GG

Sunshine on my Shoulders

The crickets are going wild, sweet things. My feet hurt from running, and my heart is happy from bent-double laughing with friends.

Daylight is sleepy-gone. I lay down below the window and grope for starlight. Searching out the faint light in my room has become a relaxing ritual. There are stars most nights, and in the winter they settle into the netted branches of the trees like voluntary Christmas lights. The yard light shines on a photograph of my older sister and I, and there is another faint twinkle where light catches a certain curve of the window-latch. Sometimes moonlight settles across my bed and onto the collage on my closet doors.

I am enthralled by light – enchanted. Taken. Excited. Thrilled.

John Denver gets me –

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy

Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry

Sunshine on the water looks so lovely

Sunshine almost always makes me high.

(Sunshine on my Shoulders – Denver).

 

 

 

Sunshine is why I don’t close the kitchen blinds even when I can’t see for the glare of the sun on the dew. It’s why I hate wearing sunglasses, and why I may have missed catching the Frisbee for admiration of the sunset in the park.

The yard light silhouettes the trees against my window in a fluid, friendly shadow. Even when the stars are dancing privately behind a curtain of clouds and the moon has sailed around the curve, I will still have the rustling, light-imprinted leaves on my window and the soft square of light reflected by the photo of my sister and me.

Why is it I cling so to light? Why do people love the sun so much that we have a specific disorder for sun-deprived depression? Why do people I love find the least joy in months where there is the least sunshine?

I think there’s a heavenly reason for this bright, heavenly bliss we name summer afternoons. What if we were made to look at the sun and think of the Son? What if we’re meant to grow under this light to the world, and so also our souls deepen and strengthen under the Light of the World? Perhaps, just as without luminance of some sort, we cannot see, so also our spirits are blind without the illumination of the Spirit?

What if our God was brilliant enough to give us a symbol of himself in the form of simple joy?

Oh happy sunshine.

Grace always,

-GG

August Afternoon

All summer’s been scholastically oriented for me. Why don’t you take the summer off? they say. I want to graduate! I reply.

This afternoon was a happy sigh – just a lovely fit for an August day. 

 

This sweet little fellow would have been content to lay there forever if only I would keep scratching his tummy. 

 

 

The pup whose wee, chipper tail you see was curled up in Leah’s shadow a moment earlier, and she wanted a selfie with him. Lil’ Squirmy ain’t got time for that, I suppose.

 

Mmmm. Smelling the grass. Feeling the soft warm of a puppy by your side. Hearing the laughter of sweet Leah.  This is summer.

I must explain a bit about Leah. Henceforth – she will be called my sister because we have mutually decided that I am her big sister and she is my little Leah. It’s a fabulous arrangement.

Leah, Blog. Blog, Leah. And puppies.

 

Grace always,

-GG